This chapter discusses how a physiological model of emotion created new avenues into time-worn narratives about aesthetic experience. Focusing on five thinkers who shared an interest in describing ...
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This chapter discusses how a physiological model of emotion created new avenues into time-worn narratives about aesthetic experience. Focusing on five thinkers who shared an interest in describing aesthetic experience as an embodied affect—Alexander Bain, Herbert Spencer, Grant Allen, Walter Pater, and Thomas Hardy—the chapter shows how physiological aesthetics challenged the notion that aesthetic judgment was necessarily a slow, reflective process of deliberation. Evolutionary theory and physiology provided tools for rescaling aesthetic response: for Grant Allen and Herbert Spencer, the experience of beauty was a reflex that had evolved slowly in evolutionary time; while for Alexander Bain, it was an immediate neurophysiological response to stimuli of form, color, or sound. This scientific discourse is manifested in later works such as Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native and Walter Pater’s The Renaissance, which experiment with the notion of aesthetic experience as involving discernible physical impressions on the nervous system.Less

Response: The Scale of Affect in Physiological Aesthetics

Benjamin Morgan

Published in print: 2017-05-01

This chapter discusses how a physiological model of emotion created new avenues into time-worn narratives about aesthetic experience. Focusing on five thinkers who shared an interest in describing aesthetic experience as an embodied affect—Alexander Bain, Herbert Spencer, Grant Allen, Walter Pater, and Thomas Hardy—the chapter shows how physiological aesthetics challenged the notion that aesthetic judgment was necessarily a slow, reflective process of deliberation. Evolutionary theory and physiology provided tools for rescaling aesthetic response: for Grant Allen and Herbert Spencer, the experience of beauty was a reflex that had evolved slowly in evolutionary time; while for Alexander Bain, it was an immediate neurophysiological response to stimuli of form, color, or sound. This scientific discourse is manifested in later works such as Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native and Walter Pater’s The Renaissance, which experiment with the notion of aesthetic experience as involving discernible physical impressions on the nervous system.

This volume gives evidence for the unity of knowledge in evolutionary biology, the evolutionary social sciences, and the evolutionary humanities. It contains 14 separately authored essays, a foreword ...
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This volume gives evidence for the unity of knowledge in evolutionary biology, the evolutionary social sciences, and the evolutionary humanities. It contains 14 separately authored essays, a foreword by Alice Dreger, a theoretical introduction by Joseph Carroll, and afterwords by David Sloan Wilson and Jonathan Gottschall. Edward O. Wilson, Christopher Boehm, Herbert Gintis, Michael Rose, and Henry Harpending discuss human social evolution. Barbara Oakley integrates psychology and engineering. Dan P. McAdams delineates a model of human identity, and Carroll and his collaborators use a similar model for a quantitative study of Victorian novels. Ellen Dissanayake and John Hawks probe the mystery behind the markings ancient humans made on stones. Brian Boyd uses cognitive psychology to analyze poetry and comics. Catherine Salmon and Mathias Clasen use evolutionary psychology to explain salient genres of popular culture: horror fiction, professional wrestling, romance novels, and male adventure novels.Less

Darwin's Bridge : Uniting the Humanities and Sciences

Published in print: 2016-08-01

This volume gives evidence for the unity of knowledge in evolutionary biology, the evolutionary social sciences, and the evolutionary humanities. It contains 14 separately authored essays, a foreword by Alice Dreger, a theoretical introduction by Joseph Carroll, and afterwords by David Sloan Wilson and Jonathan Gottschall. Edward O. Wilson, Christopher Boehm, Herbert Gintis, Michael Rose, and Henry Harpending discuss human social evolution. Barbara Oakley integrates psychology and engineering. Dan P. McAdams delineates a model of human identity, and Carroll and his collaborators use a similar model for a quantitative study of Victorian novels. Ellen Dissanayake and John Hawks probe the mystery behind the markings ancient humans made on stones. Brian Boyd uses cognitive psychology to analyze poetry and comics. Catherine Salmon and Mathias Clasen use evolutionary psychology to explain salient genres of popular culture: horror fiction, professional wrestling, romance novels, and male adventure novels.

The Aesthetic Animal answers the ultimate questions of why we adorn ourselves; embellish our things and surroundings; and produce art, music, song, dance, and fiction. Humans are aesthetic animals that spend vast amounts of time and resources on seemingly useless aesthetic activities. However, nature would not allow a species to waste precious time and effort on activities completely unrelated to the survival, reproduction, and well-being of that species. Consequently, the aesthetic impulse must have some important biological functions. An impulse is a natural, internal behavioral incentive that does not need external reward to exist. A number of observations indicate that the aesthetic impulse is exactly such an inherent part of human nature, and therefore it is a primary impulse in its own right with several important functions. The aesthetic impulse may guide us toward what is biologically good for us and help us choose the right fitness-enhancing items in our surroundings. It is a valid individual fitness indicator, as well as a unifying social group marker, and aesthetically skilled individuals get more mating possibilities, higher status, and more collaborative offers. This book is written in a lively and entertaining tone, and it presents an original and comprehensive synthesis of the empirical field, synthesizing data from archeology, cave art, anthropology, biology, ethology, and experimental and evolutionary psychology and neuro-aesthetics.Less

The Aesthetic Animal

Henrik Hogh-Olesen

Published in print: 2018-10-15

The Aesthetic Animal answers the ultimate questions of why we adorn ourselves; embellish our things and surroundings; and produce art, music, song, dance, and fiction. Humans are aesthetic animals that spend vast amounts of time and resources on seemingly useless aesthetic activities. However, nature would not allow a species to waste precious time and effort on activities completely unrelated to the survival, reproduction, and well-being of that species. Consequently, the aesthetic impulse must have some important biological functions. An impulse is a natural, internal behavioral incentive that does not need external reward to exist. A number of observations indicate that the aesthetic impulse is exactly such an inherent part of human nature, and therefore it is a primary impulse in its own right with several important functions. The aesthetic impulse may guide us toward what is biologically good for us and help us choose the right fitness-enhancing items in our surroundings. It is a valid individual fitness indicator, as well as a unifying social group marker, and aesthetically skilled individuals get more mating possibilities, higher status, and more collaborative offers. This book is written in a lively and entertaining tone, and it presents an original and comprehensive synthesis of the empirical field, synthesizing data from archeology, cave art, anthropology, biology, ethology, and experimental and evolutionary psychology and neuro-aesthetics.